Publications by authors named "Alejandro Llorente-Esteban"

The Na/I symporter (NIS), the plasma membrane protein that actively transports I (stoichiometry 2Na:1I) in thyroid physiology and radioiodide-based thyroid cancer treatment, also transports the environmental pollutant perchlorate (stoichiometry 1Na:1ClO), which competes with I for transport. Until now, the mechanism by which NIS transports different anion substrates with different stoichiometries has remained unelucidated. We carried out transport measurements and analyzed these using a statistical thermodynamics-based equation and electrophysiological experiments to show that the different stoichiometry of ClO transport is due to ClO binding to a high-affinity non-transport allosteric site that prevents Na from binding to one of its two sites.

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